Adamantly believing / evangelizing / proselytizing the faith that there is no God when we are so ignorant about something so elemental as the origin of life or the origin of the universe is shameful, especially for someone living in the 21st Century in a Western country with access to free education and Internet access.
Shameful”.

I’m so very glad I stumbled across this little beauty!
I’ve been exposed to much in the way of Christian “reasoning” in recent times (at my own initiative) and it’s always perplexed me because I could never quite grasp how their mind was working. To me this quote encapsulates it beautifully. It’s so concise and to the point and yet seems to sum up completely the Christian view of atheism in one stunning sentence.
I feel totally enlightened by it. I will be saving this wonderful sentence to share with my friends (both christian and atheist ones).

Just a quick comment and question admin.
Is this your honest opinion of the athiestic viewpoint?
If one were to follow the logic to it’s conclusion then one should totally believe in the existence of god and have no opinions otherwise until one could prove or have absolute knowledge of the mechanisms invloved in how life started and how the universe came into being.
Is this a fair comment?

Well I do, that same type of individual with the same personality traits is now in another camp, the atheists and sceptics! I am not saying all atheists and sceptics are like this, but a great many now are. I have seen it so many times, a debate in a pub, and if someone just simply says they believe in God, then the atheist seems to try to win his argument aggressively rather than with reason.

Now some of you atheists hated it when another tried to ram religion down your throats, but now you do the same. If this atheism belief is really so much to shout about, then why aren’t you all happy in your belief, sitting on your porch enjoying a whisky and a cigar, instead of trying to evangelise the rest of the world? Someone on here mentioned that the natural state of a newborn baby is not to believe in God, but I seem to recall that the natural state of a newborn baby is also not to convince everyone else there is no god. Many of you out there are starting to sound like people with real issues when it comes to relating to others rather than really being happy in your belief. Yes I can hear you saying there are religious people like this too, I know I have met them also, and in truth am less than perfect myself.

I say that in the 21st century the atheists and sceptics have become the new generation of obnoxious ‘bible bashers’. I have heard many of them say ‘we don’t need to prove the none existence of God, but the religious need to prove the existence as it is their place to do so.”

Well I disagree, if you are the one trying to ear bash and bludgeon the other person then you provide evidence of the none existence of God. I haven’t got a problem with someone saying they don’t believe in God, or believing, but only with those who feel they have the right to keep harping on aggressively about their beliefs.

I can say that I am grateful to Darwin for smashing the power of the control freaks in the churches who tried to run every detail of our great grand parents lives. Now we have another set of tyrants, the same people as before but now fighting in another camp and calling themselves atheists, sceptics and scientists, and for these bullies perhaps we are in need of another type of Darwin.

You also claim the evidence is so strong that those who don’t draw that conclusion “stand condemned on the day of judgment.”

Yet you can’t give that picture of your god, that hypothesis.

I guess you will stand condemned on that day of judgment.

Silly, isn’t it?

Ok, I have no idea how you reached:

Admin said…”Mathematical proof?”

ID is abductive, not mathematically provable.

I will repeat what I wrote…

As you know Cedric, scientific experiments can never give us 100% certainty. So what do you mean by proof? Mathematical proof?

What sort of experiment would you suggest would satisfy your requirements?

Shame on you.

Admin said…”Mathematical proof?”

If you’re suggesting that there’s mathematical evidence for ID, then bring it on and let the world’s mathematicians see it.

(Is that too ‘sarcastic’ for you or does that sound like a sane and reasonable thing to do?)

We believe in General Revelation and Special Revelation.

The first reveals God in nature.

The second reveals God from the Bible — God’s special revelation to His followers.

Thus we have 2 forms of revelation, and they should operate as per the correspondence principle in quantum mechanics.

Now, we cannot derive much theological truth from general revelation. We would say, as per the letter the Apostle Paul wrote to the Roman church in the New Testament, that there is enough truth about God revealed thru nature for people to stand condemned on the day of judgment. You Ken, therefore, will be without excuse when you at some future time stand before Jesus Christ and bow your knee to him. He will say to you, “you had enough evidence from nature to know there is a God”.

Revelation about the nature of God, His plan, purposes thru Christ and so on are only available thru special revelation — e.g. the Bible. The Bible alone explains how you, Ken, can be made right with a holy God who is otherwise going to condemn you to hell for eternity as per his perfect righteous and holy judgment.

Conclusion: Science (and ID) can help show the fact that there is a God, but not prove it. The Bible gives us the special revelation that we require to be made right before the holy God, creator of the universe, because of the work of Jesus Christ. Science will have enormous trouble reaching this form of knowledge

Cheers.

1. Observe God…
2. Formulate hypothesis…

Cheers.

Stones and glasshouses!

My “God Hypothesis” is what Christians have always believed, more or less. Like scientists, “we see thru a glass dimly” and do not agree on all points. That is so obvious that it hardly needs stating.

To hint as some do that we disagree on everything is simply false. Take the Apostles Creed for example. I believe this just as Christians have for almost 2000 years.

I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Amen.

In fact, we recited this at church this morning (first time I have ever done that, and shame on the churches generally for ignoring this and being generally dumb instead!)

Admin

Does it sound fair to you?

What sort of experiment would you suggest would satisfy your requirements?

So would that explain why nobody is doing or can do experiments with Intelligent Design?

Not at all Ken. You are making a category mistake suggesting that God can be reached using the scientific method. The Christian God, (the only one I argue for), is outside of nature. No experiment is going to prove His existence.

Geering is just applying modernist methods to God — but they won’t work. Not all truth comes from science as you know. So it turns out that Geering is a man trapped in a worldview that cannot allow access to that which he a priori has rejected.

The problem with religious gods is that nobody actually advances a specific hypothesis. You can talk to a number of Chrsitians in the same congregation and their concept of god is different for all of them.

So – this question is (as Geering points out) a stupid question – unless a specific god hypothesis is proposed.

Ball in your court!

Claiming: “We don’t believe in “gods” plural. This includes any form of higher being no matter how fantastic they may sound.” is a claim that requires the atheist to bear the burden of proof. Do you not understand this? If you make the claim, you bear the burden of proof.